Democracy Now! has regularly covered the stories of those imprisoned at the U.S. detention facility located in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, since former President George W. Bush began the so-called "war on terror." The first captives arrived at the detention camp on January 11, 2002.

According to a 2012 profile in Rolling Stone magazine by the late reporter Michael Hastings, the newly freed U.S. soldier Bowe Bergdahl joined the Army in 2008 after he first tried to enlist with the French Foreign Legion but was rejected. He was deployed to Afghanistan just after President Obama ordered the first troop surge in the spring of 2009. Bergdahl reportedly told a soldier in his unit, "If this deployment is lame … I’m...

Bowe Bergdahl, the last known American prisoner of war in Afghanistan, has been freed in a prison swap with the Taliban five years after his capture. Bergdahl was captured after reportedly walking off his base unarmed. He was said to have left a note claiming he had become disillusioned with the Army, did not support the American mission in Afghanistan, and was leaving to start a new life. Bergdahl’s parents, Bob and Jani, had first...

In a deal brokered by Qatar, the United States agreed to release five Taliban leaders from Guantánamo Bay in return for winning Bowe Bergdahl’s freedom. Bergdahl is now being treated at an American military hospital in Germany and will return to the United States at a later date. The Taliban leaders will be forced to remain in Qatar for one year. The deal has been controversial. Some of Bergdahl’s former soldiers say he should face...

In one of the great mysteries of the U.S. military prison at Guantánamo Bay, three prisoners, two from Saudi Arabia and one from Yemen, died the night of June 9, 2006. Authorities at Guantánamo said the three men — Yasser Talal al-Zahrani, Salah Ahmed al-Salami and Mani Shaman al-Utaybi — had killed themselves. The commander at Guantánamo, Rear Admiral Harry Harris, described their deaths as an "act of asymmetrical warfare...

In his State of the Union address, President Obama called on the United States to "move off a permanent war footing," citing his recent limits on the use of drones, his withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, and his effort to close the military prison at Guantánamo Bay. Obama also vowed to reform National Security Agency surveillance programs to ensure that "the privacy of ordinary people is not being...

A new report says medical professionals working under U.S. military orders have been complicit in the abuse of terrorism suspects. The Task Force on Preserving Medical Professionalism concluded that medical staff who worked with the CIA and Pentagon "designed and participated in cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment and torture of detainees" at Guantánamo Bay and at secret prisons overseas. The two-year study cites doctors for...

More than 150 days in their hunger strike, at least 45 Guantánamo prisoners are being force-fed through tubes. "It’s regrettable that it’s taking them putting their lives at risk to get us to pay attention, that they’ve been cleared for transfer, yet they’re still in prison," says Col. Morris Davis, former chief prosecutor at Guantánamo. [includes rush transcript]

Lawyers for accused Army whistleblower Bradley Manning have opened their defense at his military court-martial with a bid to dismiss a number of charges, including aiding the enemy. We’re joined by the former chief prosecutor at Guantánamo Bay, Col. Morris Davis, who has just wrapped two days of testimony for the defense. Davis told the court that many of the files Manning leaked on Guantánamo were already out in the public and that they...

As the prison-wide hunger strike at Guantánamo enters its 133rd day, a group of top U.S. doctors and public health specialists are calling on their colleagues in the military to boycott the mass force-feeding of prisoners. In an article for The New England Journal of Medicine, three professors from Boston University write: "Physicians at Guantánamo cannot permit the military to use them and their medical skills for political purposes and...